Bette Bounces Back
Bette and Aaron: One Sings, The Other Doesn't
Grover Lewis


Half an hour before show time at Bimbo's 365 Club in San Francisco, Aaron Russo clutches his continental shelf of a gut, half keeling over from hunger. "Arghhh," he moans, "these waiters have gotta be out on strike, you know what I'm saying?'' 

Russo is sitting at the best table in the sold-out house; but the waiters keep whipping past, ignoring him. It's not like when he's out with Bette and they get all smarmy and helpful. Without Bette, Russo looks ... well, so unable to afford the tab.  So insignificant and classless and altogether slob like.  The moon-pie Jewish face framed by greasy ringlets, the Cookie Monster belly, the grungy gray sweatshirt that hikes up in the rear to show suet and hair decorating his backbone  ... When the waiters dart sidelong glances at Russo, their faces register a used VW bus topped with a fright wig. 

Russo sighs and pokes through the pockets of his baggy-assed jeans until he finds a Nature Valley granola bar, and he devours that while he wig-wags for attention.  Growling desperate, he leans his incredible bulk out into the aisles and sticks his open palm in front of a passing waiter’s face: “Excuse me, sir, how about some dinner for us here -?”  The waiter blinks at Russo’s baseball-mitt-sized plan, clears his throat delicately: “I’m, uh, afraid you gentleman have arrived too late to be served –“  “Wrong.  I’m Miss Midler’s manager, and I can have dinner whenever I like.”  The waiter puts on a stiff, caked smile: “I . . . see.”  “Right.  Make is steak for two and all the trimmings, you know what I’m saying?” 

The order materializes in Burger King time, and to show that he isn't ego-ravening, he's just starving to death, Russo initials the waiter's check with a hefty tip. Then he bends to his plate, wolfing down the New York cut and slicking up the salad, his knife and fork a rotary blur. When the food starts to connect with his main line, he tosses off a goblet of Bimbo's best red and asks if I'd care to have his baked potato.  I decline, and he pushes it chastely to the edge of his plate and picks up the thread of his story - where was he in the cab over from the hotel? Oh, yeah ... 

He'd escaped from his father's undergarment business in Brooklyn and hustle-bluffed his way into managing a string of rock nightclubs, and when that shaky seam collapsed at the end of the sixties, he'd ended up operating a dinky little record label distributed by CBS. The outfit was called Kinetic, and it was strictly no hits, no runs and all errors. He was sitting around in his drawers one night contemplating his total lack of success and watching the Carson show when he noticed Bette Midler.  She was fresh from her first big splash at the gay baths in Manhattan, and she mentioned on the air that she didn't have a record contract. Well, he had a record label, right? Next day, he pitched Clive Davis, then head of CBS, on the idea of signing her. Clive said nah, nah, she was a bum, a stiff, she was Never Going to Happen.  Clive had recently told him the same thing about Don McLean, so Russo gave up on the dippy record racket and forgot about Bette Midler, and -

"I went into the gold and silver business.  Made a lot of money, too."  

The ...gold and silver business. 

"Sure. You know-trading commodities." Russo nudges the baked potato around the plate with his fork, jabbing at it longingly. "See, I'm basically a very conservative person. A libertarian, actually - you know what I'm saying? You recall that ‘Star-Spangled Night' benefit at the Hollywood Bowl for the gay community? I produced that show with Bette and Lily Tomlin and Richard Pryer and all the others because I believed in that principle. 

"Know what I'd like a crack at? I'm serious. I'd love to be president of the United States.  Oh, it'd be a heavy hammer over your head at all times, no s---, but I'd-listen, I would eliminate 95 percent of all taxes.  Of course I'm serious. If you can get rid of unemployment, you can get rid of taxes, right?  People have a lot of money, they can employ everybody else. This country was built on no taxes, you know. I think the whole Sturm and Drang of taxes didn't even start until the 1920s.  So you give everybody a job and you don’t have to pay all those bureaucrats who 90 percent of taxes in salaries.” 

"Sic 'em, Aaron, Bill Graham drawls.  Russo thumps the table at the sight of the rock entrepreneur and bounces up to pump his hand.  “Hey, Bill, what’s happening?  Graham shrugs morosely and says she’s got bleeping Areosmith and bleeping Chicago and bleeping Spener David in town for gigs all at once, and it’s a royal pain.  "Ah, you're just getting older," Russo needles him, "older and uglier.'' Graham sucks a tooth and counts the overflowing house with a cold and practiced eye: "Yeah, well, I learned the key to the industry years ago, sonny.  Never, never raise your voice." 

Rocking with jelly-belly laughter, Russo waves Graham away and drops back into his chair. By reflex, he picks up his fork and sort of bayonets the potato. 

"Bill Graham and me . . . in the olden rock days, he was Hertz and I was Avis.  Do I consider him ...  what's the word again? My compeer?  Does that mean are we in the same league? Hmn, I never thought about it before because I don't regard myself as a businessman. Oh, sure. I can negotiate and deal as well as anybody, but my main ... fixation has always been to create gems. I was never 'into' the business of things as much as the quality of things. Big dough, movie star mansions-so what? All that shit makes for big egos and big trouble, you ask me. Not that money is unimportant - far from it - but in my scheme of values I always went for Small Wonderful, you know what I'm saying?" 

Russo can't keep his fork off that spud. He worries it, slices off a wedge, passes it under his nose like a vial of exquisite perfume. Then he cackles at his own foolishness and rushes away his plate and waggles a thumb at a beautiful young woman seated at a nearby table. 

"You want compeers? That gorgeous creature is my compeer - oh, oh is she ever.  Do I still have an eye for the ladies?  Doctor, I may be fat, but I'm nimble.  Oh, I like healthy women - I adore healthy women. But I need stimulation - that's my problem. I get bored easily, not in the sexual sense but in the day-to-day routine of living around somebody, and that's why I always have problems with women.  I anticipate the worst before it happens. I sort of create it, you know - I fulfill my own prophecies. I don't know why, but it's true." 

Russo lowers his head and his voice and one eyelid: "Sometimes I think that Bette and I are actually in a marriage ... sometimes it seems that way. We were lovers for years, yeah. I was married when we first got involved, and it was all very confusing and painful. Did it break up my marriage? I couldn't say directly how, but in some way I'm sure it did, yeah. 

"Bette and me ... it was Sturm und Drang from the word go, but the roughest part was breaking off the romance and remaining manager and client. Believe me, it took strength to end it, and we had a lot of problems until about a year ago. Jealousies, fighting ... oh, it was crazy, unreal. Now it's all sort of adjusting itself. Actually, it's... ready to flare up at any moment." Russo lights a Marlboro and laughs edgily. "You know what I'm saying? It's brooding under there ... kind of under control.  Waiting for its moment to strike. Ha! 

"Nah, seriously... Bette and I always fought because that was the nature of our roles with each other. We still fight on the average of once a day. The usual reason is that I have to tell her things that nobody else will tell her, and who wants to hear that kinda crap? But there's a very deep love between us, and ... I think I would die for the woman. If it came right down to it, I'd give up my life for hers. I mean, you can never say for sure, but I believe that I would. 

"We've been together since '72, and we've never signed a contract. That's right - there's no paper between us. The way it came about was, lessee . . . I'd been out of the music  business for about a year and a half, and our paths just sort of chanced to cross again in New York.  So we met a few times, got to be on a friendly basis. Bette had signed with Atlantic, but she didn't have a record out and nothing was happening with her career. So one day she asked me if I'd manage her. 

"I was skeptical, so I hemmed and hawed and finally said, 'Look when you're on your deathbed, what is it you'll want to have achieved?' She said 'I want to be a legend.' When she told me that, I knew I had to do it. It wasn't money, it wasn't stardom - it was more than any of that. It was a chance to do something intelligent. To design a gem of a career. 

"Which we've done together as partners ever since. She's the show, and I'm the navigator. I mean, instead of Bimbo's, I could've put Bette in Madison Square Garden for a week, you know what I'm saying? But Bette doesn't belong in an echo chamber like that because she's a comedienne, a song stylist, an actress - and she'll be a legend, too, before we're through." 

The house lights wink and the waiters scurry around delivering a final round of drinks before the show begins. Russo sucks down half a screwdriver and flashes me the thumbs up sign: "Here's what it's all about, doctor." 

The Harlettes hit the stage like a seven-car collision at a drive-in movie - All Talking! All Singing! All Dancing!  The trio's caterwauling set - a twenty-minute hissy fit - clears every sinus on the premises and leaves the crowd howling for more. 

As the applause peaks, Bette Midler strolls out from the wings in a candy-striped Dr. Denton's romper suit, her mitts raised aloft a la Rocky. Without preamble, she hangs a solid whipping on her theme song "Friends," dusts her hands at the conclusion, and goes tch-tch at a front-row table full of elegant homosexuals: 

"You hubba-hubba queens have been doing Quaaludes again, haven't you?  Kids, the sixties are over... 

"Thank you, San Francisco, you're so chic and wonderful! Oh, I love a town in a fog . . . You know that disco down the street called Dance Your Ass Of - I'm gonna open a joint just like that and call it Boogie Till You Puke ... 

"Did I sing the ballad yet? Where was I? Oh, God, oh God - from the film of the same name. Starring George Burns and John Denver. It's so good to know that George is still working with a dumb blond ... your tacky gobs.  It's called 'La Vie en Rose,' and it shouldn't be confused with La Viande Rose, or The Red Meat, which is a very famous French film of the fifties about a young girl who longed to be a prima butcherina. Maestro? Hello? Is the band here yet?'' 

When she lets it out full-throttle, the Divine Miss M's voice could tenderize round steak, but now she turns it into a soft and secret instrument and the crowd sits in thrall, Midler's mood shifts are audacious and eerie in range, and she works on the audience's senses like a sapper. With an elliptical gesture, she becomes the classic chanteuse, investing Piafs regal old torch song with the kind of womanly vulnerability that doesn't connote masochism. With a saucy shake of the bottom, she's once again the Little Engine That Could, highballing around the stage with a hand mike, a lock of stray hair flying over her brow like a wild red flag. Her vibrant, sexy beauty is heart stopping, and her wit stings like a paper cut: 

"I moved to L.A. not long back, did you hear? Okay, go ahead, hiss and moan and get it out of your systems ... Yeah, I moved down there because I wanted to break into the movies, It was my baby face, I guess, but Roman Polanski offered me a part in a flick called Close Encounters With the Third Grade. 

"And Universal wanted me for the Pat Nixon story. The Woman in the Iron Mask. Quite a challenge - the actress who plays Pat isn't allowed to move her face for 200 years. Did I tell you I slept with Dick? Yeah, it lasted eighteen and a half minutes and it was quite painful ... for him!" 

"Tell' em, doll!" some inebriate brays from the darkness. 

"I’m telllin’ em, sailor!" Midler brays back from the light. 

Aaron Russo tugs gently at my sleeve.  "You know what I'm saying?" he whispers. "I mean, why not aim high?" 

Concocting a Small Wonderful legend in an era of berserk hype requires pluck, luck, wit, grit and naked appetite, and in the winter of 1977-78, Russo is on the case, hungry as usual. For nearly five years, Bette Midler's professional appearances have been limited to concert halls and vast concrete bunkers such as L.A.'s Universal Amphitheatre, so Russo reverses the policy and books her into a string of "intimate" nightclubs.  He times the release of her fifth Atlantic album to tie in both with the tour and the December airing of her first NBC-TV special, Ol' Red Hair Is Back. To show that he's playing strictly hard ball, he and Midler announce that she will make her oft-delayed film debut in The Rose, to begin production at Twentieth Century-Fox in March. 

The hills of Hollywood are alive with aspiring manager-types who wonder aloud about Midler's yearlong absence from the public boards. The implication is that Russo has mismanaged or somehow bungled his client's career. "Bette moved west from New York in February of 1977," Russo says with a shrug.  "Since then we've both worked full-time preparing for what's going on publicly now. It took half of my energy the last few years keeping her out of turkeys like The Fortune. " 

The six-city club tour, hop scotching from Vancouver to Manhattan, is a bold stroke. It serves not only to renew Midler's performing energies, but also to spell out Russo's message about his client:  She is the premier woman performer of her generation. She is not in direct competition with the likes of Linda Ronstadt, Helen Reddy, Streisand or Minnelli. Miss M’s rivals are Chaplin, Cagney, Garbo ... Why not aim high? 

Midler's Northern and Southern California play-dates are both instant sellout engagements, attracting her cult in clamoring hordes and generating a combined gross of $290,000. Scalpers outside Bimbo's ask upwards of $100 for a $15 ticket. 

For her opening at the Roxy, the bonton of Hollywood turns out in force, signaling its approval with innumerable standing ovations and endless billows of cigarillo and reefer  smoke.  Midler counts the evening as a particular personal triumph, and she is still aglow about it days afterwards. 

During the LA run of the show, I spend a couple of afternoons with the singer at the Beverly Hills home she shares with her boyfriend, actor Peter Riegert. Most of the time, we sit at a plank table near the kitchen, drinking coffee. 

Midler wears no makeup and looks a mere mite off-stage.  She mimes everything. When she says her father was a house painter - "inside and outside" - she acts out two different styles of painting. Different strokes. That kind of fastidiousness marks her speech, too. She makes an uncommon effort to be precise and, I gather, honest.  I mention what Russo said to me about dying for her. I wonder if she would do the same for him .... 

"Well, I don't know - I feel very close to dying now and again, but I always pull myself out of the fire just in time.  Hmm, Aaron and I lock horns occasionally, and we don't spend a lot of time on pleasantries anymore - we're like family that way - but we have a very rewarding relationship. I consider myself lucky because he pays a lot of attention to me - he doesn't have any other clients, you know. He loves me. He thinks I'm the greatest thing on God's green earth. 

"Aaron and I ... it's rough sometimes, I won't say it isn't rough - but it's satisfying in the long haul because we're proud of the caliber of work we do. Our shows are consistently good, and they prove that this whole thing wasn't just a flash in the pan - a three-year wonder career. It's grown, expanded, and we've managed at last to get into film. It's extremely hard to make the crossover from pop music to movies because the studio honchos want you to prove everything to them. You practically have to mount a production of Hamlet all by yourself before they'll get the idea you can act. 

"Well, Aaron and I stuck it out, and I could go on forever with what he's built for me. I mean, I will always be able to work. The fact that I don't have a hit record one-year isn't going to make a lot of difference to a career like mine. That's what Aaron has given me, so I consider myself not only lucky but blessed. I guess I would die for him. 

"I'm all steamed up about doing The Rose, yes. The character I play is a girl singer of the sixties ... strong-willed and somewhat shell-shocked by the tumult of those times. As I was myself ... The part isn't altogether formed in my mind yet, but I think it reflects a couple of things about me. A certain amount of insecurity, for example - most people experience it, but don't want to reveal it.  My best work is always very revelatory.  When I stand on the stage, I try to get - not completely naked, because you have to hold something back or else there's no mystery - but as close to naked as I can bear to come.  I want people to sense that what I'm showing them isn't phony. I want to spark that shock of recognition that makes them say, 'Oh, I know what that gesture means, that look.' That's some form of acting, and I've always done it. 

"I was a performer even as a kid, sure.  Just took it for granted, never imagined I'd make a living at it. It started - let me think - when I was a junior in high school in Honolulu, where I grew up. I had a couple of inspiring speech teachers who assigned oral readings in class, and I always loved to read out loud – very much out loud." 

Laughing, Midler makes a cannon with her thumb and forefinger and fires off a couple of whistling salves. "Anyway, to keep in good with the teachers, you had to go to tournaments and compete in dramatics and stuff, and for some reason I took it into my head to do all that. Didn't have a clue what I was doing, but I was caught up in it like a flame. Like I used to do Elisabeth and Essex, and I didn't have any idea who Elizabeth was. I knew she was a queen, and I figured her for a redhead, so I played it that way - very Sturm und Drang and everything. 

"My childhood was easygoing. We were a big, poor family, but we had good times.  My mom is a super-divine woman. She always loved show business, and in fact she named me after Bette Davis. My dad was - you want rigid? He was rigid. He moved to Hawaii from New Jersey to escape from his mother, I understand.  He's feisty - he'll argue about anything. He's the kind of guy who calls up the talk shows and quarrels with the announcer. He made his opinions very well known to me when I got up into adolescence. He has never seen me perform - that is correct. He doesn't like the idea of me prissing around and being provocative in public. My father's a real drag, you know? I love and adore him, but to this day I have to be prepared to do battle with him tooth and nail. 

"Maybe I got my temperament from him - that could be. I know I've smacked a few dingalings in my time. I bopped a very large radio person once. Oh, God, what a dreadful, abominable night ... 

"It was the New Year’s Eve when the Marahuana law changed in California, and we were playing the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. At midnight, it was going to become a misdemeanor to smoke grass, rather than a felony. Cause for rejoicing, right? So to make the evening extra special, everyone in my employ was rolling joints. We had rolled about 1,800 and we were on our way to 3,600 and we were going to tape them under everyone's seat, and at midnight we were going to tell the audience to take a whiff on us. Only someone let it slip what we were doing and our big surprise was blown. 

"I was devastated. I kept hoping until the last minute that somebody would come up with another idea as marvelous as that, but when push came to shove. I realized it was up to me, and what did this poor woman have to barter but her own body, the flesh of herself! So at the stroke of midnight, I duh-ropped my dress and exposed myself to 3,600 people. I don't think they even saw it, you know. It was just my little chest. Nipples to the wind ... 

"Well, Aaron freaked out, called me every name in the book, and left the theater in a huff. I went through the rest of the show under this rotten cloud of ghastly doom, and just sort of dragged myself to a big party in my behalf afterwards. And this radio guy had the nerve to tell me he didn't like my new single. Christ - another killing blow. I sulked about it until I was in a perfect frenzy and then I marched up to him and said, 'You don't like it, don't play it, and I slugged him and smashed the record and threw it into the fireplace and stalked out of the joint on my spiked heels ... I was not, shall we say, in a very sub-tile frame of reference. 

"I ironed it out with the guy later, but I've got that streak of temper now and then. Usually it only happens when I feel trapped by incompetence and imbecility. It's a cry for help, actually ... Listen, would you care for some more coffee?" 

I push out my cup and ask if she has any particular heroes or heroines. 

“Who awes me, you mean? Hmn ... Jane Fonda, I don't know about awe, but a lot of women at my age and stage in life really like and respect her. What appeals to me about the woman is that she stands up for what she believes in, and she has her home and her family, and she has her career, too, A lot of women yearn for that combination, and Jane Fonda appears to be making it work very well. God forbid she should pay attention to negative reviews. 

"It's dangerous to read reviews – the good ones or the bad ones. I was crippled twice in my career by bad reviews, and I almost don't read them at all anymore. The bad ones hurt your feelings, and the good ones make you forget who you really are: They swell your head and they make you think yours s--- doesn't stink. When you stoop to that, whatever you had flies right out the window and you're just a shell. You're nothing. 

“Critics continually lump me in with Barbra Streisand and Liza Minnelii, and ... I can't see it myself. The three of us are supposed to be bravura songstresses or something, but the connection eludes me. I saw Minnelli in The Act, and that's a perfect example of  what I mean.  I thought the play was mindless, childish, dishonest - it was embarrassing.  My method of work is to take complete responsibility for what happens on stage. I don't feel Minnelli took any responsibility for that show. She allowed herself to be manipulated. 

"Streisand, on the other hand, says what she means.  Her work is pretty much what she's about, and either you like it or you don't. Yeah, I saw A Star Is Born, too ... I think Streisand is a terrific singer. 

"I don't know either of the ladies personally. I've chatted with Liza on a number of occasions, and she's a wonderful girl - she's girlish. And I met Streisand at the Grammys last year, and she was beautiful and chic and very womanly. You know what I'm saying? The one being girlish and the other being womanly? Oh, let's move on to something else before I screw up. I love being bitchy on stage, but it's indecent in private." 

Midler gazes out the deckside windows at the day's liver-colored overcast and suppresses a shiver. "I can't get used to the sky here," she says. 

"My idea of a good time in L.A. is to go to the Fatburger with Tom Waits. Fact, Peter Riegert and I schlepped him over there last night for fries and a malted. 

"The Fatburger is a local junk-food pit, and Tom Waits is - do you know Tom Waits? - oh, he's won-der-ful. I first ran into him at the Bottom Line in New York. He was singing 'The Heart of Saturday Night.' and I just fell in love with him on the spot. 

"We got passingly acquainted that first night, and then I ran into him out here someplace, and I suggested we get together for a visit. Tom lives ... well, sort of knee-deep in grunge, so he was reluctant for me to see his apartment. I grew up in lots of clutter myself, and delicate I ain't, so I kept after him till he finally invited me over. He acted ultra-shy at first, but he finally ushered me around, and he's got his piano in the kitchen, and he only uses the kitchen range to light his cigarettes, and then there's this refrigerator where he keeps his hammers and wrenches and nuts and bolts and stuff like that. He opened the fridge door and with an absolute poker face he said, 'I got some cool tools in here.' You ever hear a cornier line than that? I howled for an hour, and we've been buddies ever since. 

"Tom can always get me tickled, and he really helped jack up my spirits after the disaster of that gay-rights benefit in Hollywood. Oh, that sorry business brought me so far down ... I've thought and thought about it, and I'm still not sure what happened that night. 

"To begin with, the homosexual community has supported my career since I worked at the old Continental Baths in New York. I guess I'm kind of a heroine to a lot of gay people. I don't know all the reasons, but I think they appreciate my sense of humor and they consider me sort of larger than life and they recognize that I'm not afraid to call a spade a spade.  A lot of gays identify with me I’m the spirit of good times and enjoyment - the opposite of someone self-destructive like Judy Garland. Oh, I've gone through my own flirtation - with-doom phases, sure, you bet... When I first started out, I was so insecure about everything that I used to drink myself into a stupor every night - whine and carry on like the next minute would be my last. But I soon found I couldn't drink like that – I just blew up and got very fat - and as I got older I developed a little confidence and respect for myself and I stopped that crap. 

"Anyway, the gay sector was taking a lot of heat from the Anita Bryant forces, and Aaron and I got to talking about it, and we came up with the idea of staging the benefit. I was so proud of him for pulling it together - the logistics were next to impossible, and he worked like a dog for weeks on end.  

"Comes the big night, and there were 18,000 people in the Hollywood Bowl looking to have a good time, and I was in my dressing room running lines with the PA system turned off. I had no idea that anything unusual was happening until one of the Harlettes came back and told me that Richard Pryor had walked off the stage and told the audience to kiss his 'rich black ass.' 

"Hmn, I thought ... that's interesting. I've said worse than that to a lot of folks, and so, not at all grasping the context of how he'd said it, I went on stage and said, 'Who'd like to kiss my rich white ass?' I sensed right away that something else was going on out there besides me ... something scary. Still, I really didn't have any idea of how deeply Pryor had offended the audience until after the show when somebody described to me what had happened, and then I went into shock, too." Midler taps a skittering little dance of irritation on the tabletop with her fingernails. 

"Well, Christ ... what was Richard trying to do? I couldn't tell you because I haven't talked to him since. Some said that he showed up without enough material, and when he ran out of stuff to say, he simply went on the attack. Others claimed he was right in introducing a serious political issue into the program.  

"Whatever it was, was very dangerous.  I mean, ranting and raving about where were the ‘faggots’ during the burning of Watts – that’s serious?  That’s political?  I don’t know Pryor very well – he’s always kept his distance from me – but I’ve always thought of him as much more Jewish than black, and as I recall, the first few years of his career he was exceedingly like a copy – very much like a cop.  And as to where all the heavies were during Watts, Pryor’s manager was backstage that night and he said, “I can tell you where Richard Pryor was during the Watts riots. ‘He was at my house watching them on television.’ 

"So. you see" Midler slaps the table with the flat of her palm-"Mr. Pryor came to his consciousness a little late in life, too, and ... he's a bit of a fraud.  We're all entitled to that side of ourselves, and I certainly have it. I'm not going to puff myself up like any great Joan of Ark.  I'm full of s---, too, but I'm a son of a bitch if I'm going to stand around and say I'm nor full of s---.  That's what Pryor is doing, and he's as full of s--- as anybody else. 

"That's what the sixties did. The sixties showed us that everybody is full of s---, and that's why the whole dream has broken down. There's no room left for respect. It used to be that there were people who were not full of s---, and you could depend on them for that. Well, no more. If Jesus Christ came back, he'd find it tough sledding today, you know? 

"I think Richard Pryer had a blooming nerve. I mean, who in hell is he? All that snotty sanctimoniousness - really?  Piety is for the Pope - just for the Pope" 

Midler realizes she is shaking her finger at me and she throws back her head and laughs aloud. "See? Full of s---. And I'm Exhibit A ... Isn't that tacky? Oh, excuse me for mouthing off.... 

"Peter will break up when I tell him about this. He and I have a relationship that's utterly painless. We're great companions - we keep each other company, and we lift each other up when we're down, and it's verv simple and straightforward. There's none of the game crap between us. 

"No, I've never been married, because I never met anybody I could be with who didn't cause me all kinds of horrible pain and anxiety and tension. It's not that way with Peter, naturally. I love to talk to him and look at him, and I think I even understand him. We've been together over a year, and that's some kind of a record for me. It helps that both of us come from the theater. We get totally caught up in plays, movies, characters that we invent, jokes that we tell each other ... I can see why people get married now that I have Pete. 

"I'm a happy woman - very happy.  Working again is good for me. I love being able to do what it is I do. I consider myself profoundly lucky. 

"The films we're going to make are what I've been waiting and hoping for my whole life. I'm not sure the first one will be That Great Movie I've always dreamed about, but ... we'll do our best and we'll go on. We'll find out how to do it, and we'll get on with it. 

"Aaron always understood that it was the movies for us, we never talked about it much, but it was always in the back of our minds. Now I feel like I'm on the brink of some kind of vast adventure. I'd like to … see, I was always in love with Charlie Chaplin. Just madly in love with him - the idea of him. I'd like to create that kind of character. I don't know if anyone could approach the Little Tramp, but that's what I'd like to try. To have my little lady character ... I'd like to do The Merry Adventures Of The Divine Miss M as a series, you know? The travels and travails of Miss M as she carries on and muddles through until … everybody claps and claps and she lives happily ever after. . . " 

Why don't we just go out on that, I suggest, Midler brushes aside a strand of ruby hair and drops a curtsy as she shakes hands. Walking me to the front door, she notices that my tape recorder is still running. "Ooh, honey," she croons, "take care of your little batteries or you’ll run our of juice.”  She switched the off button. 
Click.